


a violent collision

by penhaligon



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22050931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhaligon/pseuds/penhaligon
Summary: It starts small and righteous.
Relationships: Eothas & Waidwen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	a violent collision

**Author's Note:**

> Listened to three songs nonstop to write this, so here's a mini-playlist:  
> 1\. [Worthy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvcbDaNsPKQ) by Jacob Banks.  
> 2\. [Tokyo Drifting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulP2XdAP2xg) by Glass Animals & Denzel Curry.  
> 3\. [Holiest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwr-0Ps1xY8) by Glass Animals & Tei-Shi.
> 
> Content warning: This fic contains brief allusions to child abuse, including CSA.

The temple is opulent, a testament to the good will of the local government and the offerings of a community led astray by false promises. Every week, the priest tells the devout that faith requires deeds, and deeds are best made manifest through loyalty to those that lead them, through giving and giving in the hopes of something better. The devout believe him, because they are poor and exhausted and have little else to believe in, and every week, they give when they don't have much to spare and do not question when their betters sit on dragon-hoarded wealth.

But no more.

When Waidwen enters, the marble cracks under his feet, and the light of dawn spills through the open doors behind him. The congregation cries out, some in fear and some in awe, but he pays them no mind. His eyes are fixed on the far end of the temple, where the so-called priest of Eothas is already falling to his knees. Waidwen sees, with eyes not his own, the crimes staining the folk man's soul like rot in vorlas, and he doesn't see the believers cowering away from his approach, the ones who slip to their knees as well, too terrified to move.

"Mercy," the priest gasps as Waidwen advances down the aisle, because he already knows what awaits him. "Mercy, please--"

But there had been no mercy for Waidwen at his father's hands, and none for the farmers and the poor that had starved while their leaders did nothing, and none for the children this man had hurt.

Waidwen and the presence within him seize the priest and lift him up by the front of his robes, bunched together at his throat so tightly that it chokes him. The man writhes in a grip too strong to break, clawing pathetically at the hand that holds him and yet cowering too much to fight back.

 _See how it feels,_ Waidwen thinks, before he remembers where he is. His grip doesn't loosen.

Eothas is better with words than he is, and he reaches out to the presence, seeking assistance. It responds, entwining with his thoughts, and when they speak, the Dawnstars are loudest, resounding with twenty-six years of anger and resentment.

"People of Brightwood," they say, "for too long, you have been suppressed and beaten down. You have been led astray by those unworthy of your trust. This _priest_ ," they spit it out like a curse, "is nothing more than a sycophant who has used your money to line his pockets and the pockets of those he really serves." A murmur follows, shocked and disbelieving and angry. "He has made you think that your suffering is meant to be, instead of manufactured by your leaders in order to profit off of your pain." The murmur rises, questioning, fevered. "He has preyed on your children." The murmur becomes a roar, and it rings against the marble in a crescendo.

The thing that is both Waidwen and Eothas pauses, and Waidwen blinks. The crowd, shrinking only moments ago, now stirs uneasily and furiously before him. Turned so easily by a few words and the luminous magic tricks of a god. Trained from birth to refrain from questioning, to obey authority.

That is why Eothas has come to Readceras. There is no army more easily mobilized than its suffering people, and something rings at the back of Waidwen's mind with the thought, an echo of the crowd's increasing frenzy.

A dissonance, faint and uneasy.

But the priest lets out a whimper, and the fury rises again. Waidwen's attention snaps back to the man trembling in his grip, and he sees only blazing white-gold light reflected in the priest's petrified eyes. Readceras is littered with this man's kind, with priests and politicians who use faith to justify every rotten deed under the sun, who have warped the priesthood of Eothas beyond recognition. And it isn't only here. The world is poisoned with so-called faithful looking for justification and with gods who encourage it.

But no more.

The creature that is and isn't Waidwen grits its teeth, and the god within reaches out to the priest's quivering essence. They snuff it out like it's no more than a flame upon a candle wick, and the body goes limp in their grip.

"For that," they say, Waidwen's voice interwoven with Gaun's, and the body is tossed aside, collapsing lifelessly against the altar, "he forfeits his life and returns to the Wheel."

Some jeer and cheer. Some are silent. Eothas keeps speaking, but Waidwen's attention diverts to a few children clinging to their mother in one of the nearest pews, and he doesn't hear a word Eothas says. A hot shame burns in his gut at the sight. These are not the same children that the priest hurt, and they may never know what he protected them from. But he doesn't care for the look in their eyes.

 _Stop,_ he thinks. _Turn it off. I don't want them to be afraid of me._

Eothas acquiesces, and Waidwen only knows that he's stopped glowing because the white-gold reflections of light fade from surfaces and eyes around him. The light that remains comes from the many candles that line the altar, from the dawn still spilling through the doors. But with Waidwen's glow goes Eothas's words, too, the warmth of his presence retreating back into a small golden hum, and words aren't really Waidwen's thing. He can talk an ear off, sure, but he can't make grand speeches like that. So he focuses on what he knows.

"We need to see about redistributing food stores," he says to the congregation, because he knows that there is enough to go around despite every claim to the contrary. He's learned that famines are created, more often than not, but there will be no more of that in Readceras.

It's not exactly an impressive cap to the speech, but something alights in the people's eyes at the words.

When Waidwen tries to smile at the children, they don't smile back, and his insides sink. But there is a fervor spreading throughout the town, a joy compounded by the handing out of food and the arrival of a god's mouthpiece. In the face of that, the incident soon fades to the back of Waidwen's mind, as if it had never been.

* * *

There is a lake outside of the town, and it's there to which Waidwen retreats for a few minutes of calm. The paladins calling themselves the Fellows of St. Waidwen are useful for keeping others away, even if he needs no protection, and after he argues with her for a few minutes, their commander promises that no one will disturb him while he speaks to Eothas. Waidwen finds himself sitting alone on the banks of the placid lake, staring out at the reflection of the setting sun in its glassy waters.

Though he's never really alone, these days.

A headache pounds somewhere behind his eyes, a dull throb that he notices now that things are quiet. But even as it comes to his attention, and he rubs at his forehead, the warmth within him spreads gentle fingers, and the pain fades, leaving him feeling lighter.

 _You wanted to kill him,_ Eothas says, the voice in Waidwen's mind calm and lacking judgment. Only curious. _Why?_

Waidwen sighs. Now that he is no longer in the grip of purpose, of anger, it sits uncomfortably in his chest, the memory of seeing life leave a body so abruptly. But it isn't enough to make him regret it wholly. "Those kids have got to live with what he did," he says, and it goes even further than that, to the gaunt faces of farmers and their children too. "Why should he get to?" He waits for Eothas to say something, but he feels only the god's silent, steady attention. "Maybe it's not my place to decide, but this way, he can't weasel his way back into power after we leave." He hesitates. He doesn't want to ask, but he does anyway. Like an instinct. "Was that... wrong?"

 _I can't tell you that,_ Eothas says. _Perhaps his soul is better spent on another turn of the Wheel. Or perhaps he could have found redemption in this life. It is more your place to decide than mine._

He does that often, turning questions back around. Like he doesn't want to tell Waidwen what to do. "No one's done anything," Waidwen murmurs, watching the sunset light sparkle on the surface of the water. "To stop it, I mean. The rot." And he doesn't mean the vorlas. But he knows why Readceras has been slow to rise up. He's a farmer because he'd been raised as one, because he hadn't known what else to do. At the time, a different path had seemed too far away, too alien -- until a shining god had shown up and shaken him out of his stupor. "I know you're angry about that too."

The clergy of the country use the name of Eothas in all of their deeds, no matter how low and dirty, and for all that Eothas keeps parts of himself held close and hidden, Waidwen has a sense of his moods by now. The presence within Waidwen shifts, as if under scrutiny. _I am,_ Eothas agrees.

"So someone has to do something," Waidwen says. "But I don't think talking always works. Most people wouldn't listen to me until you started showing your hand."

The warmth flickers and burns a little brighter. Waidwen has come to associate it with smiling. _I put too much faith in their ability to listen,_ Eothas says. _And this is our hand?_

Waidwen nods. "There's a lot of them," he says. Too many priests and politicians poisoning Readceras, and with nothing to keep them in check -- until now. Some would flee when confronted, like the governor. But many would linger, waiting for their chance to worm their way back into what they had before. "When the rot's there, you've got to cut it out before it threatens the rest of the crop."

 _Then we will,_ Eothas says, and it feels like a covenant.

The reflection of the sun on the lake gleams painfully bright now, an elongated splash of light, but Waidwen keeps his eyes on the water. He doesn't know why he came here, of all places, to relax and clear his head. All it does is remind him of home, and there's precious little of home that brings him comfort. But something about familiarity makes his back and his shoulders relax all the same, tension trickling out of him the longer he sits with only the water stirred by gentle wind, with the setting sun and the god inside of him for company.

What would Father say, if he could see Waidwen now? He's thought about it often, and he thinks about it now, on the shores of a lake like the one near their house. Would he fall to his knees? Apologize? Unlikely. Waidwen could be chosen by a god, and Father would find some way to criticize it.

"Do you get along with your family?" Waidwen asks abruptly.

The presence shifts again, its surprise immediate and unmasked. It isn't often that Waidwen can catch Eothas off-guard, but if he's being honest with himself, he enjoys it when he manages to. Just a bit. And Eothas seems to like it when he pushes back, but the voice in Waidwen's mind is pensive this time. _Why do you ask?_

"Well," Waidwen says, "you said you wanted to expose the gods and their lies, after we're done here. You don't seem too happy with them."

Eothas takes a long moment to answer. _Some more than others,_ he says. _You were correct,_ _when you said that someone has to do something. Readceras is not the only part of the world playing home to rot._ He pauses, and in it, Waidwen hears more than Eothas perhaps wants to convey. _It isn't personal._

"Not even a little?" Waidwen asks knowingly.

That flicker of a smile comes again. It might even be a laugh this time. _We have spent two thousand years in close quarters,_ Eothas says. _There might be some petty satisfaction in it._

Waidwen chuckles, and the presence within him glimmers with it, bright and intimate. He likes this, talking to Eothas not as a mortal to a god, but as one person to another. And perhaps there's petty satisfaction in that too. All of Father's prayers hadn't gotten him anything, save for an early death. But Waidwen doesn't pray. He speaks, and Eothas listens. "You know, I--"

Blinding pain eclipses every word and thought, and Waidwen rocks forward with a gasp. Though he tries to scramble up, his legs sag and his feet stumble on the damp ground. His back and his chest burn with agony, so much that he can't form a single coherent thought, but even as he cries out and his knees buckle, the pain blessedly recedes.

His thoughts change shape as something else surges forth, furious and radiant. It envelops his mind, and pain falls away, and Waidwen is aware that they get up and spin around. That they confront a shadowy figure and cast it to the ground, dead. There is no pain or fear, even though something just ripped through them with enough force to kill them. There is no pain or fear, and it is intoxicating. They can't feel a thing, except for a blinding satisfaction that the threat is eliminated, that the thing that hurt them is gone.

A small part of Waidwen that isn't quite so wrapped up in the sudden attack, that remains separate and distinct, doesn't like the feeling and doesn't like how it overtook him so suddenly. Doesn't like how there is no control, no clear thought. It reminds him of the time he'd gotten blackout drunk on spiked wyrthoneg, just because he could. Father had found out, like he always had, and had beaten him for it. The part of Waidwen that watches the rest panics, and the world comes back into focus as he pushes through the presence wrapped protectively around him.

But agony comes back into focus too, and he nearly buckles again, next to a body lying prone on the grass. "No!" he chokes out, and he can hardly get a breath down his throat. "Don't do that."

Eothas holds back, and Waidwen's head stays clear, but the god's worry hovers close to the surface, and fire burns deep within Waidwen's chest, bringing involuntary tears to his eyes. _It went through,_ Eothas says, and Waidwen is in too much pain to parse out what he's talking about, _but there is a piece of shrapnel still in your heart. This will hurt._

"Just do it," Waidwen gasps, and then his awareness narrows again, though it's not Eothas's doing this time. He doesn't know if his screams make it past his throat, and he's only vaguely aware of his hands scrabbling uselessly at his chest. But there is a clarity somewhere in his mind, like looking through the surface of a lake on a clear day, down to the murky bed: an awareness of something exiting his chest and dropping through his grasping fingers, of sinew and muscle and skin knitting back together.

Waidwen doesn't know when the pain stops being all-encompassing, but he finds himself on his knees and blinking down at blades of grass flecked with red, at the shadows of bright white light fading away. His chest aches, and his body trembles.

 _May I?_ Eothas asks, his voice unusually faint.

Waidwen hesitates, then nods. He straightens, and the presence curls through him more gently this time. The pain fades and numbs, as if suppressed by a soft hand, and Waidwen is abstractly aware that there is more minute healing taking place beyond that, making it as if a bullet had never torn straight through his heart and his chest. And this time, the merging between him and the entity within him is not so violent, with no pain or fear to make it blaze.

The body beside him is an elf man in a dark robe, hood splayed open and rifle lying a few meters away. The man's eyes stare unseeingly up at the evening sky, and there isn't a mark upon him. Waidwen knows that his soul had been cast back to the Wheel, though he hardly remembers doing so, and he stares at the body, drawing in a deep breath and finding it easier this time.

 _I'm sorry,_ Eothas says. _I was distracted. I should have sensed his approach._

"It's okay," Waidwen says. Distracted by _him_ , and he doesn't mind that. He squints down at the man, noting the talisman around his neck that hums with some kind of magic, and a glimmer of memory surfaces. "I've... seen someone like this before. At the executions." His hometown had never seemed to have a shortage of those, and from time to time, there had been men and women in dark hoods accompanying the proceedings. He hadn't thought much of it then. Why ask questions, when that could earn you a flogging or a noose?

Something stirs within the presence he carries, an upset like a guttering flame. _My sister's handiwork is everywhere,_ Eothas says darkly, and unease trickles down Waidwen's spine. He can't recall how many times he's seen figures like this one before. More than a few, maybe. How many of them are there? Why had they been there? _This man served Woedica in life, and he will serve her in death._

Waidwen rubs his chest with an absent hand. His fingers come away sticky and red. "Did he think he could kill me?"

 _He wished to_ _confirm that it was impossible through ordinary means,_ Eothas says. _And thus confirm my presence. He received his answer._

The dying light of the sun turns the dead man's glassy eyes into pools of fire. Waidwen frowns and has a hard time tearing his gaze away from the body. "But... we killed him."

 _He did not need to be alive to report his findings,_ Eothas says. _He only needed to bear witness._

At last, Waidwen looks away, but it's only to gaze back at the lake, glittering with sparks of sunlight like licking flames. It's farther away than he expects to find it. He doesn't remember crossing that distance, and he swallows. "So they know now."

 _They were always going to find out,_ Eothas says.

"Are you afraid?" Waidwen asks.

Silence answers him, and he climbs to his feet warily, though no further pain accompanies the movements. _I am not afraid of the other gods,_ Eothas says then, and Waidwen is beginning to understand that it's usually how Eothas lies -- by telling part of the truth. Eothas doesn't fear his kin. But he is afraid of something.

Waidwen doesn't ask. He brings a hand to his chest again and looks at the blood on his fingers, dark stains in the failing light, and he finds them shaking.

 _I'm sorry,_ Eothas says again. _I did not mean to frighten you._

"Just startled me a bit, is all," Waidwen says. His chest no longer hurts, and yet his now-healed heart pounds against it with enough force to make it ache, enough force that Eothas can no doubt hear it drumming. Waidwen lies too, sometimes, but Eothas makes no remark on it. They let each other pretend.

The presence roils within him, and Waidwen can feel a new sharpness in its thoughts, alert and attentive. It makes him painfully aware of every curve of every blade of grass, every shadow of every tree in the distance, every ripple in the water ahead of them. It makes his spine roll with phantom chill. _Are you alright?_

Waidwen nods as shouts ring behind him. Several of the Fellows approach at a run, their armor glinting in the sunset light as he turns. The commander is the first to reach him, and she turns questioning eyes on him as she takes in the scene -- the body and the rifle on the ground and the blood on his jerkin.

"I'm good," Waidwen assures her. "It was just the one assassin." The statement sounds stupidly casual, once it's out of his mouth, and he looks down at the dead man again. Another wasted life, but Eothas had told him, when they'd joined, that the gods would go far to protect their lies. That this would not be easy, once word started spreading.

This is just the harbinger. The easy part. More will be coming to kill him, and for now, he's unkillable -- as long as Eothas is holding the reins.

The commander's gaze returns to the bloody hole in Waidwen's jerkin, putting the pieces of the scene together, and her eyes widen. "Glory be to Eothas," she says reverently, a sentiment echoed by the Fellows behind her.

Waidwen's heart still pounds uncomfortably in his chest. "Yeah," he mutters, bending down to scoop up the talisman so that they won't hear him. "That."

A smile flickers somewhere within him, and one tugs at the corners of Waidwen's mouth in answer as he straightens. He smooths his expression out, then nods to the body. "Make sure he gets buried, okay?"

He walks back to town alone, and for once, none of the Fellows offer their customary protest. They're starting to truly grasp what it means, that he isn't really alone, and so no one argues this time. As he walks, Waidwen watches his hand glow in the darkness of late evening. The talisman crumbles away into dust in his fingers, the magic dissipates, and the glow retreats. Souls have dissipated under his hands in much the same way, but his memories of that are tinted with the haze of radiance, with emotions better left to people like Father. With a sense of time that stutters and skips, with a recall that isn't quite solid.

"We should go to Dinead next," Waidwen says, because it's easier to think about logistics. It's what he knows, even if he only has a farmer's eye for it. "It's close, and the mayor has a standing force. Could be useful."

Eothas, as always, acquiesces to his wishes, and on days like these, Waidwen sometimes wonders if that's as good of a thing as it feels.


End file.
